Why can't the US government drill its own oil instead of leaving this important task to the whim of oil?

companies?Why can't the US government drill its own oil instead of leaving this important task to the whim of oil?
I say that is a great idea.





Step 1....seize all the oil companies.








Remember the 11 Countries with Nationalized Oil are also the have the 11 cheapest gas prices.Why can't the US government drill its own oil instead of leaving this important task to the whim of oil?
It is not up to the government - it is up to the private sector, in this case, the oil companies to drill its own oil. They see no reason to expand its spending on this or building new refineries because there is no monetary incentive to do so. By the way, beginning to do new offshore drilling today would not affect the oil supply or costs of oil for 20 to 30 years. We have to start sometime but fossil fuels are not the answer in the long-term in my opinion.
The US Government has done this in the past: that is to say they contracted with drilling firms and oilfield contractors to do the work. That ended in 1998 when the US Government sold off Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve.





On the one hand, we want to encourage private ownership, but on the other hand, lawmakers gave up an important tool they had to affect the price of oil (they could be extracting more right now as I type if they still had the tool).





Part of the reason the Government doesn't do this is purely ideological: there is an idea that markets are inherently effecient (and that is true provided there is perfect competition, but even recent history clearly shows that businesses will engage in anti-competitive practices undermining the perfect competition model, and then they'll expect the US taxpayer to bail them all out when it all comes crashing down).





The reality current laisse farre ideologues are running into is that all of their assumptions of market effeciency rely, in turn, on the following assumptions:





1. The market is more-or-less rational. This is a dangerous assumption because markets are made by people, and people are only highly rational on their best days, and they are prone to mass hysterias on their worst days.





2. There is perfect competition: there is no monopolization, there are no cartels, nobody will try to corner markets, and it is impossible to ignite hysterias.





3. Public monetary and fiscal policy have minimal macroeconomic effects: the opposite is true in this case, so this assumption is patently false. Monetary policy, for example, can devalue the currency and cause capital to flee the market and find other markets.
Nationalizing the oil companies is against what it means to be american. And since when has the US government done anything efficiently? I doubt oil would be any different. And it's true that other countries have very cheap gas prices, but that's because they subsize gas prices. So it's not free to the country. Rather they spend billions if not trillions of dollars every year on it and many of those governments cannot do it anymore because its costing them too much (even China is being forced to reduce their subsidies). The ones that still do it are losing a lot of money, but in some cases can afford to because they have so much oil (i.e. Saudi Arabia) the US doesn't have that much oil.





Greg: What evidence of anti-competitive practices do you have? If you're going to accuse someone of something it's only fair to show what evidence you have. I'm pretty sure you're full of it though.





Additional Info: Oil produced in the US doesn't leave the US. Just because moveon.org (or whoever) says something doesnt' make it true.
They could if congress wanted but Politicians get big donations from Big Oil. Bush and his family is in Big Oil.


Dams and leavies are considered to important for the private sector so Congress has regulated it to the Army Corp of Engineers. They could do the same with oil.
The role of the government is to ONLY do what business shouldn't, couldn't, or wouldn't do. Drilling for oil does not fall in that category.





Besides, when have you EVER known the government to do anything efficiently?
great idea.





Other countries do it.





But, the gov't does get a boatload of money during the auctions and via royalties and taxes. They get about 50% of the money
That is a cure worse than the disease. Just listening to Dems on tv talk about why they oppose offshore drilling makes me think that if they had control gas would jump in a second to 10 bucks plus a gallon.
Too many hippies.
but-but-but-but-but-but-but-but Global Warming.